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TA 17 (3) pp. 259–279 Intellect Limited 2019

Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research

Volume 17 Number 3

KEYWORDS

narrative

data visualization

storytelling

design methods

visual narrative

case study

education method

interactive art

XIAOXU DONG

Roy Ascott Technoetic Arts Studio

Data visualization: A unique

storyteller

ABSTRACT

Science and technology have changed all aspects of our lives, including the mode of

narration, from traditional stories to data stories. Storytellers have been integrating

visualizations into their narratives. From the case studies of some artworks and our

students’ works to visualization research, we have found distinct genres of narra-

tive visualization and the education method for university students. We describe

the differences between these artworks, together with interactivity and information

transmission. Some small experiments and some examples of students’ works will be

shown to explore the visual narrative. We suggest new design strategies including

how to make invisible things visible.

INTRODUCTION

Storytelling is a simple and sophisticated form of art. Stories could inspire the

audience, and show them ideas that are difficult to comprehend or explain.

Converting data into visual content is a form of storytelling. Usually, the

importance of telling a good story during data processing is overlooked, and

people are not aware that data themselves are not effective if the story behind

them is not properly presented.

Narrative methods, visualized contents and techniques applied for

presenting have changed gradually with time. Recently, many artists have

incorporated more creativity and uniqueness into their narrative methods.

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1. Traditional narrative

refers to the way of

recording with words,

videos, recordings, etc.

The development of hardware, software techenologies and richer internet

integration has made it possible to include more dynamic graphics and inter-

active experiences in artists’ works; therefore more versatile and interdiscipli-

nary narrative forms are developed.

The Economist explores the proliferation of digital data and notes that

visualization designers are ‘melding the skills of computer science, statistics,

artistic design and storytelling’.

This article expounds the changes of narrative methods and contents in

data visualization with the development of science and technology in the era

of big data. Ways of utilizing this knowledge should be taught to students in

order to help them become successful storytellers in data presentation.

THE CHANGE IN NARRATIVE METHODS AND CONTENT IN DATA

VISUALIZATION

Against the backdrop of the increasing popularity of visual forms and the

increasing number of data stories, there is no doubt that the storyteller some-

times encounters some obstacles in narrative. As all cultures have their unique

reading habits, it will greatly affect one’s understanding of data visualization,

for example, in a certain cultural environment, people are used to reading from

left to right, from top to bottom, So they also follow the invariable principles

when it comes to visual content. Moreover, there are other conventions: the

trend to the right usually also points to the future, while the upward illustrates

the trend of growth, and so on. Although these statements and rules sound

commonplace, there are still some possible errors hidden in this detail, which

may be caused by intentional manipulation or unconsciousness. The process of

narration especially in data visualization has to undoubtedly take these details

into account; a good storyteller should draw enough attention to the content

of the data itself as to keep the misunderstanding caused by different read-

ing habits to a minimum, which introduces a strong connection between the

artwork and the story. The connection will provide the audience with a stronger

sense of participation, which also reduces the possibility of other errors.

It is undeniable that there are also questioning voices, which are very

convinced that the traditional narrative

can retain the integrity of the story. At

the same time, data visualization can only express the characteristics of data,

but cannot show more content behind it, which is not a good way to describe.

The process of data visualization is not a one-to-one translation transforma-

tion process to display abstracted digital information; this narrative method

is part of the analysis process, in which specific objectives are visualized. The

presentation of the data is closely related to the content of the story to be told

with the data. The form presentation of data is closely related to the content

of the story. Moreover, if the story is presented in all aspects, the audience will

not find the key point and may easily get lost in the details of the story, which

will run counter to our original intention.

Analytics Vidhya content team has mentioned one of the best examples of

data that need to be visualized: the data is about the Quartet of Anscombe,

which is a set of four data sets. The results of these statistics are very simi-

lar and people cannot gain understanding from the chart, but when they are

visualized, the results are completely different.

Figure 1 shows the four data sets used in Anscombe’s Quartet. If you

simply look at the numbers in the chart, you will find that they are roughly the

same. But how would these statistics look after being visualized?

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Data visualization

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Did you ever think that the gap between these four groups of data visu-

alization would be so big? This example shows that the mode of narrative is

changing and that innovation in narrative methods is making every story vivid

and clear (see Figure 2).

A few years ago, when I first came into contact with data visualization, I

did an experiment with my partners that made me think about how to use

data or how to use new ways of visualization to convey the stories behind data.

In the first project, named ‘Personal Data: Daily Routines’, data were obtained

from records of all our activities as accurately as possible in terms of the type

Figure 1: Quartet of Anscombe. Copyright Analytics Vidhya Content Team.

Figure 2: After data visualization. Copyright by the Analytics Vidhya content team.

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of activity, duration and location. We will analyse the data and represent it

as a 3D installation somewhere using cheap, lo-fi materials. The aim of this

first stage of the project is to experience collection, organization and repre-

sentation of data in a hands-on way. The visualizations should communicate

data clearly, accurately and efficiently to enable the viewer to quickly gain an

understanding of the story.

Based on the above goals, how can a set of boring data become an inter-

esting story presentation? First of all, you need to show the real data recorded

and categorize the things recorded in your daily life, and then represent differ-

ent categories in different colours, such as cyan for sleep time. Pink represents

learning (the learning content recorded in this part is different, and so it will

be marked on display), orange represents meal time, blue stands for exercise

time, yellow is shopping time, green is entertainment time and dark blue is

bath time, then you need to calculate the proportion of each part in compari-

son to the sum total.

Figure 3a: Data on Friday, 12 February Visual Projection, created by Xiaoxu Dong

and Roland Yu.

Figure 3b: Data on Saturday, 13 February Visual Projection, created by Xiaoxu

Dong and Roland Yu.

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Then, we utilize behavioural performance to interact with this set of

data to make behaviour performance part of data visualization. Everyone

performs their own data, and their data will be projected on themselves (so

each person’s character silhouette is used in the data presentation). In the

process of display, the behaviour and dialogue of the characters can fully

show the emotions behind the characters. Eventually, the story was told with

a combination of data visualization and behavioural performance. We made

this experiment into a video and uploaded it to YouTube. Although the experi-

ment is very simple, we want to receive more feedback from other people who

are equally concerned about the visual narrative of data. Fortunately, it has

attracted many interested people. Some people who have viewed the videos

have left positive messages, saying that the work has inspired them and that

it is an interesting idea.

Figure 3c: Data on Sunday, 14 February Visual Projection, created by Xiaoxu Dong

and Roland Yu.

Figure 4a: Data on Friday, 12 February in performance by Roland Yu, Xiaoxu

Dong, Lynn and Anna. Data in performance. Photographed by Roland Yu.

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Figure 4b: Data on Saturday, 13 February in performance by Roland Yu, Xiaoxu

Dong, Lynn and Anna. Data in performance. Photographed by Roland Yu.

Figure 4c: Data on Sunday, 14 February in performance by Roland Yu, Xiaoxu

Dong, Lynn and Anna. Data in performance. Photographed by Roland Yu.

As for the use of behavioural performances to produce data visualization,

artist Keith Lam from Hong Kong, China, has to be mentioned. The work is

called Signal Morphor: The Orchestra (Lam 2011), which is a data visualiza-

tion behaviour performance, showing a work about signal and communica-

tion visualization. In the performance, the audience is also a performer, and

the reception and transmission of communication signals are transformed into

lights, music and images, which produce invisible signals. The dancers are

the recipients and senders of the data; they will have reactions to the signal

immediately after receiving the signal. Dancers have sensitive antennae that

respond to signals as soon as they receive them. Each dancer has an umbrella

installed with sensors to receive signals from the audience and send signals

back, which establishes live communication between dancers and the spec-

tators. A dancer can actively make phone calls, surf the Internet or send text

messages; at that time they can also passively receive calls and text messages

from the audience. The received signals will be converted into music and

images to be projected on the screen behind the dancer (see Figures 5a–d).

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Figure 5a: Signal Morphor: The Orchestra. The performer is in the performance

with data collection from the screen. Copyright Keith Lam.

Figure 5b: Signal Morphor: The Orchestra. The performer is in the performance

with data from their umbrella. Copyright Keith Lam.

Figure 5c: Signal Morphor: The Orchestra. The performer is in the performance

with data collation from the screen. Copyright Keith Lam.

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The combination of performance and data visualization is a very interesting

narrative method in which one aspect of data visualization can clearly show

the data; on the other hand, behavioural performance can not only supple-

ment the data but also excavate more content behind the story. Therefore,

such a combination compensates for the fact that data visualization may miss

the story and also greatly enriches the form of expression of the works; it leads

to more artistic appreciation and interaction.

In fact, increasingly more new technologies can be developed into new

artistic narrative methods that can be applied to data visualization as well. The

original text form has also changed into the visual form, the sound form, the

dynamic form, the sculpture form and even the behaviour performance.

In fact, increasingly more new technologies can be developed into new

artistic narrative methods that can be applied to data visualization as well.

From 2D data visualization to 3D data visualization, there are increasingly

more ways to display data in real time and interact with audiences.

In the development of data visualization, in addition to the changes of

technology, illustration and narrative methods, the content of the story is

also changing. Since the discovery of the earliest data visualization around

5500

bc, built by arranging stones or pebbles, and later, clay tokens, it is

used to record data, trade and sell (Schmandt-Besserat 1999a). In 500

bc, the earliest participatory visualizations were probably voting systems.

Voting in Greece was introduced in the fifth century

bc. Adult male citizens

were invited to express their opinion by dropping a pebble in an urn: a

white pebble meant ‘yes’ and a black pebble meant ‘no’. It is clear that the

emergence of data visualization in that era aimed to quantify some items

and simplify the difficulty of statistics. With the development of science

and technology, data visualization has been widely used in the field of

Figure 5d: Signal Morphor: The Orchestra. The performer, with data from their

umbrella. Copyright Keith Lamb.

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Figure 6: Earliest data visualization. Photographed by Denise Schmandt-Besserat.

scientific research, for example Nobel laureate crystallographer Dorothy

Crawford Hodgkin created a physical image in the mid-1940s that showed

the structure of penicillin. Nowadays, in the era of big data, people have

more convenient access to more kinds of data. Instead of confining them-

selves to the type of data, they choose what they are interested in in the

database. Therefore, the content of visual stories in data visualization has

become increasingly more abundant. In 2003, Artist Marilyn Taylor created

an artwork called Time Pieces: Physical Space-Time Cubes that consists of

seven three-dimensional maps (one for each day of the week), where the

Z-axis represents time and copper wires show how she travels through the

city during the day. On the Birmingham Made Me Design Expo, Dorota

Grabkowska and Kuba Kolec created an interactive public installation. This

project is based on the concept of data visualization, and produces large-

scale and complex data maps by viewers themselves. The aim of the project

is to explore the shape of the Birmingham people by asking the Birmingham

people the following five simple questions:

1. What made you think?

2. What made you create?

3. What made you angry?

4. What made you happy?

5. What made you change?

Visitors can visualize concepts associated with feelings, inspirations, ideas

and influences by selecting colour lines that correspond to feelings, inspira-

tions, ideas or influences and linking these lines to words on the wall. The

project has won the Most Original Exhibit Award at the Birmingham Made

Me Design Awards 2012 (see Figures 6, 7a–b, 8, 9 and 10a–e).

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Figure 7a: Voting with psephoi (pebbles) in a scene from the Wine Cup With the

Suicide of Ajax (detail), about 490

bc, attributed to the Brygos Painter. Red-figured

kylix made in Athens. Terracotta, 4 7/16 in. high x 12 3/8 in. diam. The J. Paul Getty

Museum, 86.AE.286.

Figure 7b: The ancient Greeks held one of the earliest public votes in history when

the Persians threatened their democratic system. Copyright by YouTube channel

HISTORY.

CASE STUDIES OF NARRATIVE VISUALIZATION

AQhelminthes

This is an assignment for the cyberception course. When the student is think-

ing about this project, his or her first inspiration is to find something closely

related to society, people and the environment to do experiments, so as to

change his or her perception of something.

The topic eventually chosen was AQI, which according to the students

reflected the rising general awareness of environmental issues today..

Although low air quality has been detrimental to our health, it took us a long

time to realize that. The belated attention to this issue created an especially

urgent need to address problems related to air quality.

Instead of enlisting AQI data as a set of numbers and figures that do not

emotionally engage the audience, my students’ work was able to paint a vivid

picture of the threat that bad air quality had posed on us through data visuali-

zation. They created a virtual creature. The air quality is reflected by the virtual

creature’s living condition. Its life span is programmed to be much shorter

than that of humans and it is more sensitive to air pollution conditions; thus

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the audience receives feedback through the creature’s status and emotion

connections can be established between it and humans (see Figure 11).

Throughout his narrative process, the source of the data is the National

Meteorological Administration’s API. He converts all the data into the

virtual creature’s living condition (health condition). The virtual creature’s

form is inspired by the dynamic form in Artist Golan Levin’s Yellowtail (see

Figure 12). Yellowtail (Levin 1998) is an interactive software system for the

Figure 8: Structure of penicillin. Copyright: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin.

Figure 9: Time Pieces: Physical Space-Time Cubes. Created by Marilynn Taylor.

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Figure 10a: WHAT MADE ME interactive public installation.

the Birmingham Made Me Design Expo (15–22 June 2012) at the

Mailbox, Birmingham. Copyright Dorota Grabkowska and Kuba Kolec.

Figure 10b: WHAT MADE

ME interactive questions

and tools.

Figure 10c: WHAT MADE ME installation

details.

Figure 10d: WHAT MADE ME interactive outcomes.

Figure 10e: The audience interacting with the installation.

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gestural creation and performance of real-time abstract animation. Yellowtail

repeats a user’s strokes end-over-end, enabling simultaneous specification

of a line’s shape and quality of movement. Each line repeats according to

its own period, producing an ever-changing and responsive display of lively,

worm-like textures.

In this story about air quality, the data correspond to the virtual creature’s

movement speed, life cycle, environment colour tone and the colour of the

creature itself. The background colour is the same as the colour pointed by the

pointer. The colour, size and creep strength are all affected by the index. This

work changes people’s perception about the air pollution in time dimension. It

converts a long-term problem into fifteen minutes of visual images.

This is an example of telling a meteorological story with the help of data

visualization. In this project the student tells a story of the air quality through

the living conditions of a virtual creature. The narrative method is relatively

quite clear and integrated. The ‘new life’ created in this project becomes a new

communication system. It has successfully presented the data, changed the

perception of the audience and enhanced their experience.

Channel

Channel tells a story with data visualization in which a human enters a huge

plant network and establishes an intimate connection with the plants (see

Figures 13a–c). As we all know, the human body is an elaborate system;

the huge society that humans live in is also an enormous, complex network

system. Looking at an individual, we will find that there is a circulatory system

composed of a large complicated network, transporting materials inside a

human body. If we look at humans from a societal perspective, we will find

the Internet connecting individuals with the whole society and social rela-

tionship networks that keep humans connected to each other. In fact, there is

also a network among plants. The Wood-wide Web is a mycorrhizal network.

Mycorrhizal networks are underground hyphal networks created by mycor-

rhizal fungi that connect individual plants together and transfer water, carbon,

nitrogen and other nutrients and minerals.

The aim of this project is to raise a discussion about how the relationship

between human beings and plants will change as our technology develops and

the identities of human beings and plants in this network. Just like in the film

Avatar, in which people could communicate with the plants through the hairs

and roots, we want to show the communication of the audience with the plants.

As the name ‘channel’ suggests, the project contains multiple channels

that the audience can choose from. When creating the project, the interaction

interface was designed as a frequency modulation knob and a human heart-

beat sensor was used to detect a plant’s ‘heartbeat’ signal. We found during the

experiment that the signals would change when humans touched the plants.

The four plants acted as four interfaces through which we could enter the

network of plants which are interconnected with each other.

The deep connection between the human and plant, real albeit invisible, was

visualized and rendered tangible. The four real plants correspond to four virtual

plants on the screen, and the forms of the virtual plants are artistically stylized.

The connection between the two systems will be shown when the audience

touches the plants. Through this project, the audience can not only enter into

the plant’s network and ‘communicate’ with the plants, but they can also explore

their communication status by the visualized graphics on the screen.

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Figures 11a–d: Air quality index. Copyright: The World Air Quality Index Project Team.

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Figures 11a–d: Continued.

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Attention

Attention is a student work that has won the second prize in a competition

held by Tongji University. The work captures the brainwaves when human

beings pay attention to the form of electronic signals and display them on

a screen for direct visual mapping (see Figures 14a–b and 15a–b). Compared

to the previous cases where data was still somewhat taken from the external

world, these students managed to extract data from something as abstract and

latent as human attention and consciousness.

René Descartes in his famous dualism theory mentioned that the universe

contains two radically different kinds of substances – the mind or soul,

defined as thinking. Humans can recognize their own physical form from

their reflection in the mirrors. In this project, Attention visualized humans’

thinking process by technological methods. A visualized mapping from

electroencephalogram (EEG) provides a chance to recognize and access the

‘soul’ part of one self; through this ‘mirror’ we can see our own ‘conscious-

ness’. Conventional mirrors reflect the physical body and this ‘mirror’ reflects

human consciousness. Then a question arises: what is the true core identity

of a human being in the post-human society: is it the consciousness or the

physical entity in the mirror?

In this project, EEG is used to collect human brain bioelectrical signals,

the beta brainwave. According to scientific research, beta brainwaves repre-

sent humans’ attention status, and it is a simple and controllable psycho-

logical activity. Then the beta wave is extracted by the sensor, processed and

manipulated into visualized particle forms by utilizing certain mathematical

techniques. The experiencer’s attention is thus visualized as a particle system.

The contraction and expansion of the particle system reflects the focus of

one’s attention; the audience can adjust the colour style of the particle system

through the interface.

The motivation and concept of this project are both intriguing and thor-

ough. Intangible data are collected, analysed, processed and displayed in real

time, enabling a human being’s attention to be quantified in the blink of an

eye. The audience will ask themselves questions tinted by the story while

they experience the story. What is the true core identity of a human being in

the post-human society: is it the consciousness or the physical entity in the

mirror?

Figure 12: Yellowtail. Designed by Golan Levin.

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Figure 13a: Interface. Created by Bill Zhou and Odelie Liu. Copyright: Bill Zhou,

Bobby Xu, Lou and Odelie Liu.

Figure 13b: When viewers touch different plants, the interface shows different

communication situations. Created by Bill Zhou and Odelie Liu. Copyright: Bill

Zhou, Bobby Xu, Lou and Odelie Liu.

Figure 13c: When Kinect catches humans approaching.

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CONCLUSION

In this article, we compared a conventional narrative and a data story narra-

tive. Compared to traditional narratives methods, data storytelling appeals to

our senses and emotions in a much more powerful and engaging way. With

the development of science and technology, narrative methods and presenta-

tion methods have all changed considerably.

With the assistance of these technologically enhanced storytelling

methods, artists have injected vitality into data and made them vivid tales.

Moreover, the growing range of data has also given artists much more free-

dom in choosing their subject matter. Besides texts, artists are also able to

visualize tabulated data, as well as many other types of ‘invisible’ data.

We illustrated two examples of narratives combining data visualization and

performances. Similar bold experiments have always given people many inspi-

rations and afflatus. These narratives are not merely showing the data but are of

higher artistic merit and stronger interactivity. Three more examples come from

Figures 14a–b: When the audience interacts, the interface data changes as the

audience’s attention changes. Designed by Hill Jiang. Copyright Hill Jiang, Tony

Ding and Lou.

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undergraduate students’ work from the Roy Ascott studio. As undergraduate

students, they have not only used data visualization as a narrative method but

have also focused on intriguing topics in their stories, ranging from meteorol-

ogy, plant network, to human attention. Each project told a unique and fascinat-

ing story about data, which would otherwise be dry and un intelligible.

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SUGGESTED CITATION

Dong, Xiaoxu (2019), ‘Data visualization: A unique storyteller’, Technoetic

Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 17:3, pp. 259–79, doi: https://doi.

org/10.1386/tear_00020_1

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CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Xiaoxu Dong is an artist and a graphic interaction designer. She was born in

China and studied product design, communication design and arts in China

and the UK. She is currently a lecturer in the technoetic arts BA at DeTao and

the Roy Ascott Technoetic Arts Studio for the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts.

Her research and art practice lies in the space between art, design and data

visualization. She works across the discipline of art with a research-driven

approach. She is involved in planning, developing and teaching classes, and in

presenting the studio’s student work internationally.

Contact: Roy Ascott Technoetic Arts Studio, DeTao Shanghai Center (at SIVA),

2200 Wenxiang Rd, Songjiang District, Shanghai, 201620 China.

E-mail: dongxiaoxu@hotmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4960-5778

Xiaoxu Dong has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that

was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

06_TA_17.3_Dong_259-279.indd 279 2/19/20 2:44 PM

Intellect Booksintellectbooks

To order this book online visit our website: www.intellectbooks.com

@IntellectBooks@IntellectBooks

Giuseppe Pagano

Design for Social Change in Fascist Italy

By Flavia Marcello

Giuseppe Pagano-Pogatschnig (1896–1945) was a twentieth-century

polymath operating at the intersection between architecture, media,

design and the arts. He was an exhibition and furniture designer, curator,

photographer, editor, writer and architect. A dedicated fascist turned

resistance ghter, he was active in Italy’s most dramatic social and

political era.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of an inuential architect

and his contribution to the development of modern architecture.

Itfollows his life with in-depth contributions about aspects of Pagano’s

cultural production, concluding in writings by Pagano himself and a

critical bibliography to aid scholars in furtherstudy.

ISBN 978-1-78938-100-9

350 pp | £40, $56

Paperback | Fall 2019

220 x 220 mm

E-book available

06_TA_17.3_Dong_259-279.indd 280 2/19/20 2:44 PM

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